J THE - I.. I I ... '/1' I J I " ---- --= rro ii ::: :: /}\'\\\ "..,,, 7J 0 0 .._0 . . -" .. 0 . .r. .". THE TALK OF THE. TOWN Notes and Comment W E have been thinking all week about the profound revision in the arts that would be necessary if everybody's income was arbitrarily cut to twenty-five thousand dollars a year. The comedy of manners would vanish from the stage, since seduction by epigram is unthinkable on anything less than a thousand dollars a week. Prac- tically all attempts to portray family life would disappear from the screen, since no beautiful young star would be found dead on a set that didn't suggest a Morgan partner somewhere in the family. Society reporting in the manner of Cholly Knickerbocker and his col- leagues would be doomed, since the sins and eccentricities of a man or wom- an scraping along on five hundred a week are dull and shoddy stuff at best. The art of popular fiction as practiced in the Saturday Evening Post and similar jour- nals would surely perish from the earth, since no honest workingman would be foolish enough to worship an heir- ess when he is well aware that she ' 1 f'r;; fA , r' . might easily turn out to be a financial burden on him. Vl e have always en- joyed reading about the rich and observ- ing their behavior on the stage, and if they are abolished we are going to miss them. Something will have gone out of our life the day we come upon the name Marion Davies in our paper and realize she can't afford a swim- ming pool any more than we can. H UNGARY'S recent annoyance at the United States' steadfast refusal to notice her declaration of war against us reaches something of a new high in international relations, we think. Here is our Mr. Welles, like a patient adult disciplining a child, warning Hungary that if she continues to support Hitler's war machine we will declare war on her, and there is Hungary proclaiming furiously that she declared war on us months ago, that she is not supporting a war machine but fighting, and that she wishes we would treat her like a big girl. This strange protest, particularly com- ing from so small a country, reminds us of nothing so much as the time we met the only gangster we ever personally knew. It was back in the prohibition era, in one of the Fifty-second Street cellars, and a friend led us over to an incredibly A "'. s I Ô n 4j J. .- tiny man in a blue serge suit. "This is Ricky," our friend said by way of intro- duction. "He'd cut your throat for a dollar." "Half a dollar," the little man said, smiling at us proudly. F OUR lawyers named Ferris have been busily engaged in asking the State Supreme Court in the Bronx to make another lawyer named Ferris (but formerly named Finkelstein) change his name back to what it was in the first place, or at least to change it. The first four lawyers said that they were "unwilling to have any confusion as to who is who among the persons named Ferris" and the fifth lawyer said that "for business reasons it was ad vis- able to select a name [Ferris] not con- nected with any particular country or race." Briefs were filed, arguments pre- sented, and a Supreme Court Justice of the State of New York has decided the case in favor of the new Mr. Ferris. Now it may have to go up to the United States Supreme Court, for all any of us laymen know. In the meantime, the following question arises: What is to be done with these five lawyers, and the 175,000 other lawyers in the country, for the duration of the war? Don't tell us; tell your congressman. S PEAKING of the professions (some- what bitterly, perhaps), the Times reports that a doctor in one of the local hospitals accosted another doctor in a corridor and struck him on the nose, causing a simple fracture. The one doc- tor did this to the other, it seems, because the doctor who got the broken nose had " I d " h . . tatt e on t e senIor woman Interne. (She had merely left her post to go to a party.) Our reflections on this incident have no bearing on the war. It just recalls the time we ourself were given a swift insight into what goes on out- side the patient's room in those dim, an tiseptic corridors. With our signal button pressed firmly down, we had lain there in bed for ten minutes or so, out of matches and wanting to smoke, and had finally called up the operator. Through her we obtained the desk on fl " Wh '. h ? " our oor. at s gOIng on out t ere. \ve inquired irritably, but innocently. " Oh h '. fR ." . d , t ey re Just scu lng, sal a , . nurse s vOIce. O NE of the Commandos raiding the French coast a week or so ago wore carpet slippers. "I intend to in- vade France in comfort," he remarked as he clambered over the gunwale. The accompanying journalist who recorded this entirely credible scene did a service to all of us on our side of the war. It is inspiring to know that we have with ur; a man of this gauge-one who, as he drops quietly into the waters of the Channel with blackened face and a knife in his teeth, wears what he wants on his tootsies. He was exercising a purely democratic privilege. The fact that the raid was eminently successful strengthens